One life, one girl and a million daydreams. This blog is the result of that collision.

Thursday, 6 January 2011

In a silent world nobody can hear your screams

She looked over at them, slight concern on her face. They would never understand. They had never even tried to. She’d thought about writing some sort of letter to them to try to help them understand but stubbornness had set in. If they couldn’t be bothered to make an effort with her, why should she with them?!

Her friends had told her off about this attitude before. It only takes one to make the first move, but they didn’t understand. She was too paralysed to take those first steps.

To the world around her, her world – the one she knew so well, she was deemed a chatter box. No one could understand that she was insecure about her conversational skills, that if anyone didn’t seem to like her she thought it had to be down to that. It just made the problem worse.

So today, she thinks she doesn’t speak much and her friends think she is a chatterbox. Once upon a time she thought she was a chatterbox, so just how chatty must she have been then!??!?! Sometimes she chases that girls. Sometimes she knows she has gone and she almost mourns her. Sometimes she’s happy that the girl she once was has gone.

Most days she just feels a sensation of being unhappy gently tugging at her sleeve. Never hard enough to cause an huge issue but just enough for her to know it’s still there, always following her. Her one companion. With one message. ‘You’re not good enough.’

She was so frustrated by this. She’d researched online and read so many books about confidence and public speaking and making friends, but alas one or two things would make her nod her head but most of it never really got to the crux of the problem.

She wasn’t egotistical enough to think this problem was unique to her. Or that confident people weren’t sometimes paddling like mad under water but appearing to be a swan on the surface. She wouldn’t even mind that, but how can you even pretend and fake it so well? How do you pretend to have loads to say? Either you do or you don’t.

Sometimes she’d sit on the tube and listen to the chatter around her. She’d tune in to the conversation of someone that was really chatty and quite often would sit back after a few minutes and yawn. They’d normally be talking about a right load of self indulgent bollocks.

Despite her confidence or lack of, she’d always rather not talk than just talk shite. If you are going to say something wait until it was interesting…..maybe that was the point – every moment she was expecting a star turn from her mouth.

She sighed. This wasn’t getting any easier. She thought it would with age. Everything just didn’t seem good enough. Not enough friends. Not enough money. Not a big enough house. Not enough hobbies. Not thin enough. Not pretty enough. Hair not nice enough. Clothes too boring. Conversation so dull.

These thoughts would only trigger worse thoughts and before she knew it she'd built an invisible gag wrapped so tightly around her mouth that it felt like it was never going to be removed. That nothing on this planet was tough enough to remove something that had been woven so finally for so long.

What could she do?

She didn’t know how to just ignore it until she didn’t think about it anymore.

She didn’t know how to force herself into things and out of her comfort zone because she would become paralysed.

She couldn’t go to see someone about it as she didn’t feel she was important enough or that her troubles were important enough.

She didn't feel able to just get over it.

What could she do? Who could she talk to? Maybe she should’ve written them that letter after all.

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